


Wishbone

by omnishambles



Category: The Professionals (TV 1977)
Genre: Angst, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, listen there's a dog in it for a bit so it's not all bad, period-typical inability to communicate, sad doyle in a scarf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 08:57:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20504330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omnishambles/pseuds/omnishambles
Summary: But that moment, like every other, passes.Three interweaving stories: 1977, 1986 and 1991.





	Wishbone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ailcia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ailcia/gifts).

**1986**  
“Can you honestly say you wouldn’t mind?”

They’re in bed. Doyle’s lying on his side, Bodie next to him, on his front, dark hair plastered to the back of his neck. It’s late evening or early night, and Doyle is comfortable, one hand curled against the dip in Bodie’s back, and he’s pushing his luck.

“Course not,” Bodie says into the pillow, exasperated. H assiduously avoids these kinds of conversations, prefers to fight or fuck it out, and Doyle’s learned to live with that, most of the time. But this is real stuff. This is work.

“Come on,” he says, scraping his fingernails absent-mindedly across the warm, soft skin of Bodie’s back. What with one thing and another, they both have a lot of scars, but the skin here is untouched, like new. He hasn’t always been able to do this: lie with Bodie like this, afterwards. Bodie’s softened a bit these last few years. Sometimes he even stays the night.

Bodie looks up. Ostensibly he’s annoyed, but his eyes are still dark and dulled, cheeks flushed, the way he always looks afterwards; that mix of cockiness and pleasure and sudden reserve after he’s come in Doyle’s mouth.

“What?” he says. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to be honest. I won’t take the job if you--”

Bodie laughs. “Don’t be an idiot.”

Doyle hates him for a moment; hates that distant little laugh. “Well I’d find it weird, if it was the other way round,” he says. “I don’t mind.”

“If I was your boss.”

It’s the first time Bodie’s ever actually said the words out loud, acknowledged that that’s what this means.

“Yeah,” says Doyle, slow and wary.

Bodie pushes himself up so they’re sitting side-by-side, shoulder to shoulder. He looks out of the window, at the dark, moody sky, and Doyle watches his face, trying to read it. 

“Look,” he says at length. “Cow’s got a right to retire, like anyone. Course it should be you.”

“Bodie--”

“I don’t want to turn this into a big thing, but how much longer do you really think I can do this?”

Doyle blinks, uncertain. “Do what?”

“’Active duty’.” Bodie laughs. “I’m pushing forty, Doyle. I’m fucked.”

“No,” Doyle interrupts. There’s more force in it than he intended, and Bodie laughs again. “If you’re saying you’re going to – _leave_ – if I take this job – then--”

“I’m saying I’ve got to go sometime and I’d rather it wasn’t in a coffin.”

“Not yet, though.”

“If I know you’re all right, why not? Look, can we stop talking about it please? I’m hungry.”

“I’ll make you some toast.”

“I can get something out.”

“Won’t be a minute,” says Doyle, firm. “Peanut butter?”

Bodie shrugs. It’s obvious he wanted to get out, get away – well, no. Not like that, not this time. Doyle’s going to do this his way for once.

“Come through,” he says, rolling out of bed, onto his feet and towards the door in one lithe movement.

“Bring it in here.”

“And let you get crumbs in my sheets? Fat chance.”

Bodie laughs. They’re both acting normally, but there’s a buzz of panic in Doyle’s ears. Somehow it’s all getting tangled up together: keeping Bodie here, now, and keeping Bodie _here_ in the larger sense of the word, with him.

When he reaches the kitchen, Doyle remembers he isn’t wearing any clothes. He should have brought a robe or something – the mood Bodie’s in, he’ll probably come out fully dressed, acting like they’re consummate professionals, never been anything but, and Doyle’s turned up very poorly dressed for a conference call. Sometimes the wall goes up so fast it’s almost an act of violence.

Bodie really did do that once: came out in all his clothes minutes after they’d fucked, Doyle still wandering about like somebody in a French film. Made him feel like a lunatic. It was payback of a kind, he’d suspected, for an argument they’d had the day before. Doyle could have killed him.

He’s buttering the toast when he hears Bodie come in behind him. Two slices. White bread. He prefers brown himself, but he keeps this stuff in just in case.

“Did you want peanut butter or not?” he says, not looking round, but there’s no answer, and then he feels breath against the back of his neck.

Bodie’s arms appear under his own, still bare, encircling his waist, and he feels the skin of Bodie’s chest against his back. Doyle stills, the way people do when they spot a deer out in the wild. Bodie presses a kiss against the join between his neck and shoulder. No teeth in it. It’s nice, but this tenderness is so out of character that Doyle actually feels quite unsettled.

“Hey,” he says, and turns in Bodie’s arms to face him. Bodie’s expression is unreadable.

“Sorry, Ray.”

“What for?” he asks. A pause stretches out; nothing said, but he can feel Bodie’s knuckles working against the skin of his waist. “Bodie?”

Bodie shakes his head, leans forward, kisses him. Doyle wants to break away and push him on it, on whatever this is, but Bodie is warm against him and he slides his tongue into Doyle’s mouth. They get distracted. The toast goes cold.

He takes the job on Monday morning - Cowley’s named successor. Two weeks later, Bodie is gone. 

**1977**  
They’ve been up in Scotland for work, there and back in 24 hours, and Doyle’s been driving most of it, so it’s probably tiredness that makes him turn almost into traffic. Seconds from being flattened, he slams his foot down just in time, a truck streaming past them blasting its horn, and Bodie shouts, “Ray, what the hell was that?”

They’re fine, but only just. They idle at the turning, alive, car full of the sound of their breathing and the indicator clicking away unobserved. They look at one another.

“Tired,” says Doyle, voice tight. “Sorry.”

Maybe he is just tired. Who knows. But he feels antsy, distracted – honestly, he feels like he’s driven 200 miles with Bodie’s eyes on the side of his face and it’s doing his head in. These last few weeks, Bodie’s had this way of watching him. Not in any way that Doyle can put his finger on. He just feels it: something brewing. These instincts keep them alive but now it’s driving him to distraction, he keeps thinking maybe they should have a scrap about something, get whatever this is off their chests. Maybe he should have shouted back. Or maybe he really is just - tired.

“You want to take over?”

“No,” says Bodie. Doyle meets his eyes: his face is open, normal, a little concerned, and Doyle wonders, not for the first time, if he’s going insane. “It’s late enough, let’s stop somewhere.”

“Okay,” says Doyle. He starts up again, driving at the bottom of the speed limit, and takes the next turning they see to a little motorway hotel. Bodie radios into base to notify someone while Doyle parks up.

At the brightly lit front desk, a young woman with red hair takes their money disinterestedly and hands them two sets of keys.

“How are you this evening?” Bodie asks cheerfully. She rolls her eyes. “Right,” he says.

Bodie takes both sets of keys, clocks the room numbers, then hands one to Doyle with a nod.

Still feeling unsettled, he takes the quickest route away he can think of, and says, “Sleep well.” Bodie pulls a face. Doyle knows what he’s thinking – only ten o’clock, early to sleep – but there’s no hotel bar, so what else are they going to do?

Doyle goes to his room, which is just like any of the hundred other such places he’s stayed: faded blue sheets and not much space; window with curtains drawn over it; the weak little table set up with two glasses, two mugs, two teabags, a little kettle. The overhead light makes everything seem pale and bleak, so he switches it off, tries the bedside lamp instead. Better.

He’s tired from the drive and the day, but only body-tired, wishes he’d brought a book. Still, he takes his shoes off and lies down. He’s just got comfy when there’s a knock at the door.

He could hardly be asleep already. And anyway. He’s bored.

He opens it.

“Your room’s nicer than mine,” says Bodie, breezing in.

“Swapping, are we?”

“Don’t want to go to sleep yet do you?”

Doyle shrugs.

“We should’ve brought a deck of cards or something,” Bodie says. He goes over to the window and shunts it open, and the room feels bigger.

“Should’ve brought a bottle,” says Doyle.

“I was thinking of asking the receptionist, actually.”

“You go ahead, sunshine. Good luck to you.”

“I’d share.”

“The drink or the receptionist?”

Bodie laughs, but something flashes in his eyes. Doyle looks away.

“Tea?” he says, going over to the little table. He needs to do something with his hands.

“If you’re offering.”

He picks up the miniature kettle and takes it into the bathroom to fill it. Bath. Toilet. Dripping tap. He’s stayed in so many places like this that they all blur into one: a Gideon’s by the bedside and net curtains on the window. This bathroom is bleaker than most, it must be said, all done out in this grey that Doyle thinks is called gun-metal grey. He’s ever held a gun this colour. Looks more like cold porridge.

He takes the filled kettle back to the table, plugs it in and flicks the switch. “All mod cons,” he says cheerily, but Bodie is watching him again, sat on the bed, and it’s making him feel – jangled.

“Oh, make yourself at home mate.”

“No chairs are there?”

“At least take your shoes off.”

Bodie grumbles, but does so.

They talk about the case while Doyle makes the tea. They’ve gone back and forth on all of this already, for hours, but it’s safe chat, work. Then, because there’s nowhere else to go, he brings both mugs over and they sit on the bed side-by-side, and Doyle thinks: Morecambe and Wise. The motorway in the distance sounds like the sea.

They drink their tea. They chat. They can hear bats outside, so they talk about bats. Then they hear an owl. They talk about the owl. It’s the sort of autopilot nonsense conversations you can allow when you spend all day, every day with somebody, like an old married couple. Doyle feels – calmer. He’s beginning to think the weird vibe of the last few days (weeks?) was either his imagination or actually literally him. Bodie’s just about the most straightforward, readable person in the world, and here he’s been acting like – what? Like Bodie had some sort of secret grudge or something. Like a lunatic.

They lapse into a long, comfortable silence, and then Bodie puts his empty mug on the bedside table. “Shall I go?” he says, quietly. Doyle isn’t sure when they began speaking quietly but they have been. Maybe it was the owl outside. “I should let you sleep.”

“No,” says Doyle. They look at each other. “Unless you want to sleep.”

Bodie shakes his head. “No. Too hot anyway.”

It’s one of those stuffy sorts of new buildings that trap the heat. Even with the window open, the room is too warm.

“Might be better sleeping outside.”

"You go ahead. Your room's nicer anyway. I can have your bed."

"You're already in my bed," says Doyle, trying to laugh, but he meant to say _on_.

They talk about sleeping outside, still speaking softly, as though somebody else in the room is asleep. Bodie tells a story about an unbelievably bad bite he had off a centipede, years back ("Quite literally, my arm was twice the size. That's not in any way an exaggeration. Rodgers measured it with string,") and then Doyle talks about a camping holiday he remembers from when he was small, and when he finishes, Bodie says nothing.

“Bodie?”

He’s asleep. Doyle listens to the soft animal sound of Bodie’s breathing and wonders what he should do. He could shake him awake, make him leave, but he pictures Bodie looking at him like he’s mad and goes straight off the idea. He could try and pickpocket the keys to the other room, but wouldn’t that be just as strange? Could he ask at reception? What would he say? Somewhere in the middle of this thought process, Doyle falls asleep. He dreams about the ocean.

**1991**  
Doyle has the village ringed in his A-Z, a quick enough drive from Galashiels, no problem. Initially he’d planned to drive all the way up from London, but there’s a scandal brewing, and he couldn’t get enough time away – so instead he’d got the train up and collected a hire car. The woman behind the desk had worked slowly, making him feel cross and impatient, and it wasn’t til he drove away that he’d realised she was flirting with him, trying to keep him there. He honestly hadn’t noticed.

There would have been a time when that kind of thing was all sport – but it was Bodie who did it, set them up against each other, turned every woman they met into prizes. Doyle doesn’t bother with all that now, doesn’t notice people the same way. Good thing too: man in his mid-forties, it’s not charming anymore and he knows that. Anyway, he doesn’t have time.

The countryside outside the little hire car is beautiful and forbidding, but he barely notices that either. There are files going missing at work, either a bad system or a bad apple somewhere; he turns everything over and over in his mind as he drives, who he needs to speak to, what steps he’ll have to take when he gets back. Better that than thinking about where he’s going. 

On either side of the road, there are mountains, or at least steep hillsides. They’re lined with trees all growing at an angle, like they’re tipping towards him. It makes him feel enclosed - but not observed. He can see the appeal of this place, sort of. He wishes somebody else would drive so he could look at the view. His palms are clammy.

Later, when Doyle sees the first signpost with that village’s name on it, alien and gallic, he says Bodie’s name out loud, into the silence of the car. Just to feel the word in his mouth, so it won’t be a shock next time. To practice saying it out loud.

**1977**  
When Doyle wakes up, the room is dark and for a moment he doesn’t know where he is. Strange room, strange bed, strange smell of night air. Doyle reaches out a hand and it hand connects with something. Bodie’s chest. He’d forgotten he was here, and then it all rushes back, the room, the tea, Bodie sleeping here. Somebody must have turned off the lamp.

“Hey,” says Bodie, quiet, like a breath. Doyle takes his hand away. In the moonlight, he sees Bodie shake his head and then there is a hand on his jaw. Heat. He can hear Bodie’s breathing and there’s something in his eyes so intense and strange that for a moment Doyle thinks he must be trying to communicate something, like somebody is in the room with them or – danger – something. He blinks, still waking. Hand on his jaw. The sound of the sea.

“Ray?”

It’s a question. “Yes,” he says, and then one or both of them moves and they are pressed against each other in the dark and needing. He feels Bodie’s teeth against his neck, a hand on his cock, and he says, “Bodie, please,” too loud, keeps saying it until Bodie covers his mouth with his hand. Doyle bites, bucks up, makes a sound come out of Bodie that he feels in his gut. He tries to be quieter. Swallows the sound of his needing. In the dark, they move against each other.

**1991**  
Bodie doesn’t react in any way that’s visible to the human eye. He does nothing. He says nothing. He just stands there in the doorway with dirt on his hands, which Doyle notices immediately, and thinks: he must have been gardening.

“Bodie.”

It comes out well – clear, neutral just like he practiced.

Bodie nods. “Better come in,” he says, and steps aside.

Doyle goes into Bodie’s living room in this house he has never visited and tries to look at everything without making it obvious that he’s looking. It’s a small, modern-build, low ceilings but tall windows, and it’s sparsely but pleasantly decorated: a couple of framed paintings on the walls, a pot plant on the mantelpiece and books on the shelves. Some of them Doyle recognises, he’s seen them in other houses, other rooms of Bodie’s.

Now that he’s here, he isn’t sure what to say.

“Cup of tea?” says Bodie.

“Please.”

Doyle follows him into the kitchen and watches him move around the room, watches the muscles in his back shifting underneath his clothes as he fills the kettle, takes down mugs, opens the fridge. His body still knows Bodie’s instinctively: watching him, the movement every muscle is as familiar as the words of a book that Doyle has read and re-read. As he watches Bodie in his kitchen, he tries to imagine him choosing this place, walking into it and saying: Yes please. This one. I’ll take it. Doyle feels, in that moment, a surge of absolute, white-hot fury, abandoned child gripped around the middle, lashing out.

“Here you go,” says Bodie.

Doyle nods tightly, takes the cup of tea, exhales. A breath to let his anger recede. Bodie looks calmer too.

“Not to sound middle-aged,” he says slowly, “but shall we have it in the garden?”

So they go out to the garden together. It’s full of wildflowers and an air of organised chaos, not neatly kept but – something. Considered, perhaps. There’s a hanging basket above the back door and a little metal table and chairs on the patio, painted a thick dark green. They sit opposite one another on the garden furniture, cups of tea on the table between them, the steam rising in the cool afternoon air. Loved, that’s the word. The garden looks loved.

“Did you drive all this way?”

Doyle shakes his head. “Train. And then I drove from there.”

“From Galashiels?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice drive.”

“It was.”

They lapse into silence. Doyle holds his cup of tea between two hands, stares into it, feeling Bodie’s eyes on him. He wonders why the fuck he has come so far and what he was expecting to happen when he got here.

“Got the place nice,” he says eventually. Slow, dragging the words out of himself.

“Thanks. It’s not forever.”

“No?” says Doyle, and it sounds like an accusation, inconstance. Bodie doesn’t reply, maybe because, after all these years, he knows what’s best for him. The air crackles with something: the unsayable, the fight they’re not having, the weight of terrible rage in the pit of Doyle’s stomach. And here they are, drinking tea together. It’s almost funny.

“Actually, do you know what? I should go.”

“Ray.”

He looks up – his name, that voice, it still just – stops him. Dead in his tracks. Bodie stares back. There’s something wild in his expression that Doyle can’t name. He looks down and away, and then Doyle realises what it was: longing. But that just makes him angrier. He wants to know how Bodie can look at him like that, how he can dare, when he left.

“Don’t go,” Bodie says, eyes fixed on his unlikely garden furniture. “I’m sorry, it’s just – a shock.”

“Well I didn’t wanna call ahead in case you packed up.”

“I’m not on the run, mate.”

“No?” Doyle’s laugh is horrible, bitter in his own ears. “That’s not how it felt.”

Bodie meets his eyes, wounded. They hold each other’s gaze and then Bodie covers his face with his hands, fingertips pushing at his temples, which are flecked with grey. He looks a little older and a little softer. It’s been five years and a lifetime: Doyle wonders who this person is and what they do all day long, and suddenly it occurs to him that the time since he left CI5 must have been the first since he was a teenager in which Bodie’s body has belonged solely to himself. He still looks like a man you wouldn’t start an argument with, but he’s gained some weight, sits differently, moves differently, everything about him is just less – clenched.

“I thought,” says Bodie slowly, “you’d be able to find me. Anytime. If you wanted to.”

Doyle says nothing. He’s here, so obviously that’s true, but he doesn’t know what Bodie means – that Doyle is the head of a major secret intelligence service and can find just about anybody? Or that Doyle would just know how, because he always knew? Because both of them always knew. He wants it to be the latter.

A cloud passes across the sky, plunging the garden into grey. It looks less pretty in this light. Harder. Harder to understand. Harder to love.

They’d kept tabs on Bodie, of course; couldn’t risk letting him completely out of their sight, not with everything he knew, not after everything he’d done. Obviously Bodie must know that. He hadn’t made himself hard to find either, had even bought this place with an alias they had on file for him, it pinged up on their systems straight away, as he surely knew it would.

Doyle stands up. Bodie stands too.

“Please, Ray, don’t go,” he says, and he sounds so desperate that it hurts, Doyle can actually feel it in his body – he wants to touch him, his fingers itch with it. Even if he hit him, that would be something, wouldn’t it? Close the horrible gap that’s opened between them. Time and, for once in their lives, not knowing exactly what the other person is thinking. 

“I’m not,” he says softly, watching Bodie’s shoulders slump with relief. “I’m not going. Look, I’ve been sat down all day, can we have a walk or something?”

**1977**  
When Doyle wakes, the sky outside the window is purple-blue, and he can make out the shapes of things. The kettle. The wardrobe. He turns onto his side, but the bed is empty. Bodie must have gone back to his own room.

He feels a bite of something like panic, deep in his stomach, and knows he won’t be able to sleep anymore, however early it is.

The room’s cooled down through the night and after all that stuffiness it’s cold. Doyle pulls on his underwear, hating the seedy, bleak feeling of the motel room, of being alone in it, and gets under the covers to warm up.

He wakes again hours later, surprised to realise he has slept. The room is full of bright morning sunlight.

Doyle gets up and goes into the bathroom. There are no windows in here, so he turns on the light to examine himself in the mirror. He doesn't know what difference he expects to see there, or how – and obviously there’s nothing. He looks exactly the same as yesterday. There's a bruise on his forearm but that could be from anything.

Doyle showers, dresses, wonders what he will say to Bodie when he sees him. Tries not to think about the night before. Wonders how he will force Bodie to talk to him about it. Wonders, in a moment of hysteria, if there is a form he ought to fill in at work for this sort of thing.

Overstepped physical boundaries with partner: tick box here.

As he’s finishing butting his shirt, there's a knock at the door. Doyle opens it.

“Morning!” says Bodie cheerfully. “Sleep all right?”

“Uh,” says Doyle. He’s slightly blindsided in that moment by the directness of the question and its lack of any clear relationship to reality. He wonders when, how long ago, Bodie left, how quietly he had to get up and do it so as not to wake him. He thinks about saying so many things that he says nothing, and Bodie blusters on.

“My turn to drive,” he says. “Give us the keys eh?”

And then Doyle realises: it’s going to be like that, isn’t it.

**1991**  
Walking up across the fields at the back of Bodie’s house, it occurs to Doyle that – although they have travelled miles and miles together over the last fifteen or so years; though they have walked and run and biked and driven together across the entire country – he’s not sure they have ever actually _gone_ for a _walk_ before. It seems as good a place as any to start. It’s late afternoon; soon, the sun will set and all the hills around them and all the pines will be lit up gold. Soon, it will be cold. Doyle takes his scarf out of his pocket and puts it on.

“I gave you that,” says Bodie. He’s been so quiet since they left the house that this is a surprising flash of confidence. Of the old Bodie, the one he remembers.

“No, you didn’t. It’s new.”

“Never. Red one. I remember it.”

“No. It’s new. Last Christmas.”

“Ah,” says Bodie slowly. He looks like he wants to ask something and is preventing himself with a great effort of will. Doyle can guess what that is - the same thing he’s trying not to ask himself, which is, of course, who Bodie spends his nights, days, Christmases with. He could be married for all Doyle knows. No ring, but men don’t always wear them, so who fucking knows. 

(It was from Betty. The scarf. A Christmas present, to replace the one he’d left on the tube, the one he’d had for years. A birthday present from Bodie, aeons back. But he’s not going to tell Bodie any of that. Let him fucking wonder.)

“Hey,” somebody calls. They both turn.

A little old man is walking towards them across the hill, flat-cap, scruff of a dog running beside him – the whole rural bit. Doyle raises his eyebrows.

“Pip!” the man says cheerfully, reaching them.

“Hi, Brian.” Bodie smiles and claps the man on the arm. He bends down to pat the dog. “This is an old friend of mine. Ray.”

“Good to meet you,” says Brian. He has a soft, musical Scottish accent. His dog is yapping, jumping up at everyone’s legs, demanding attention, and he says, firmly, “Down, boy.” Then he turns to Doyle. “So how do you know Pip?”

Doyle thought he’d heard that, but he wasn’t sure. It’s not the alias Bodie got the house with – he must be using another name amongst the villagers. And he’s smoothed out all his vowels since Brian arrived. Amused, he tries to catch Bodie’s eye, but Bodie’s suddenly very interested in the little dog.

“Oh, we go way back,” says Doyle. “Worked together.”

“Up visiting, are you?”

“That’s right.”

“Staying long?”

“No, no. Back tonight.”

“You’re not?” Bodie spits. Normal voice. They hadn’t talked about it.

“Well – I’ve got to get back to work. Just a flying visit.”

“Ah, I won’t keep you then,” says Brian. “Darts on Friday, Pip? Usual time?”

“Yes,” says Bodie vaguely. “See you.”

Doyle starts walking. He doesn’t want to talk about it yet: what happens next. When they’ll see each other again. If. He just wants the walk, the quiet, talking about nothing, being in the same place. Heather on the hillside. A bird calling in the treetops ahead of them. He can tell Bodie is following without hearing his footsteps, he just knows. He’s missed this: the just knowing.

For a while, they walk in silence and then, at a gesture from Bodie, they turn left, the ground banking upwards away from the village. They take the incline slowly. Not as fit as they used to be. Doyle has a desk job now, after all. When Brian and his dog are far behind them, he says, “Doing the Lord of the Manor bit, then?”

Bodie shrugs. He looks evasive, a little miserable.

An hour ago, Doyle wouldn’t have dared to push it, but he feels a familiar, almost-forgotten tingling in the pit of his stomach: the old devil rising up in him again. He wants to watch Bodie squirm.

“‘Pip’.”

“Yeah, well.” And then, in the same non-committal tone, “Phillip’s my middle name.”

“One of them.”

“Catholics, eh.”

“Go on though, Bodie - _Pip_. I mean, bloody hell. What do they think you are, gentry?”

“Look…”

Doyle cackles, delighted. “Oh my god. They do, don’t they? And you poshed up.”

“Come on.”

“You did. I heard you. I remember that voice from the old days.”

Bodie is bright red. He stops walking and covers his face with his hands.

“What?” asks Doyle.

“No,” voice muffled, “I can’t.”

Doyle’s really laughing now, he can feel it in his whole body, a lightness. He holds Bodie’s wrist, tugs his hand away from his face; when their eyes meet, Bodie starts laughing too. It makes him look younger, like no time has passed. He says something inaudible.

“They think you’re a what?”

“A poet,” says Bodie. “A bloody poet.”

They’re both laughing. Bodie’s wrist is warm in Doyle’s hand.

“It’s not my fault,” says Bodie. “I didn’t have any kind of story worked out. Turning up here in the middle of the night. And the estate agent said they’d had southerners up before, to write, so I thought…”

Doyle shakes his head as the last of his laughter dies away. He lets go of Bodie’s arm, but he’s still standing close by. At this distance he can see rough skin on Bodie’s cheeks, like he’s outside a lot. Grey in his dark hair. But his expression – his manner – suddenly it all seems exactly the same. Doyle hadn’t expected that, somehow. He’d thought he’d find Bodie more changed. It’s hard to say why. Perhaps that was just easier to imagine.

“Can I ask you something?” he says.

“Course. Anything.”

“Why here?”

Bodie shrugs. “Good a place as any.”

“For what?”

“For – temporary.”

“Bodie. It’s been five years.”

“I—”

“Five years without a word from you. Just – gone.”

“I know.” His face is horrible to look at, rotten with shame. “I couldn’t.”

“You could have. I think you could have.” Doyle is surprised to hear the pain in his voice, the rawness of it, like it’s coming from somebody else. Like a wound you barely feel at the time except for thinking: oh, that must hurt.

“Ray.”

“Not saying anything. Not saying goodbye, and just leaving.”

“I’m--”

“I would never have done that to you. Not in a million years. Wild horses, Bodie. What were you thinking?”

“Will you stop shouting and let me apologise?”

Doyle hadn’t realised he was shouting. He does as he’s told, quiets, and then Bodie puts his arms around him like he’s trying to restrain him. Doyle still isn’t sure if they’re going to fight or what, and then he realises that he’s letting Bodie hold him, arms round his waist, the way you’d hold a girl. He doesn’t care. 

He pushes his face into the crook of Bodie’s neck and inhales. It’s all the same. The familiar, indescribable smell of a person’s skin, the way they smell in the morning and beneath their clothes. It’s all just as he remembers it, except that it was never like this, they weren’t like this with each other, they weren’t – tender. Were they? Did he try? He can feel Bodie’s hand holding the back of his neck, sliding up into his hair, holding Doyle’s face there against his neck.

“I’m sorry,” says Bodie. He says it again, and again.

Time passes. Eventually, he lets go.

They look at one another, slightly bashful. 

Doyle feels a surge of something strange and giddy. Relief? He feels – weightless. For one wild moment, he imagines doing something with all that energy, something stupid: a playfight. A tussle. Shoving Bodie down the hillside and running away like a kid. It’s the same strange and stupid way that Bodie’s always made him: their seven-year-olds’ easiness with one another, proprietorial and sincere as children, but always with that same _something else_ underneath. An intensity, adult and unnameable. Well. Other people have perfectly good names for it. Just not them.

The urge to push Bodie over dies away and Doyle looks at him and Bodie looks back. Two men on a hillside in the middle of nowhere, just looking at each other. 

“Hey,” says Bodie.

The head of one of the most powerful criminal intelligence units in the country and a – a man pretending to be a poet. Doing a lot of gardening. Five fucking years, Christ.

“Ray. Don’t go yet, will you? Stay for dinner at least.”

Doyle should say that he has to leave – he has work to get back for, important work. He wants to say: so, why not come back with me? Come home.

But that moment, like every other, passes.

“Okay,” he says.

**1986**  
“You know we’ll need to keep an eye on him?” says Cowley.

They’re in his office, going through paperwork. There’s a stack on Cowley’s desk as high as a six-year-old, another beside it, two coffee cups (one empty, the other cold) and a jumble of high-level files. Doyle’s being initiated into everything too secret or too intricate or too boring to come to his notice before. Need-to-know only. Well, now he needs to know.

It’s been three weeks since Cowley called him in to tell him Bodie was gone. At first, Doyle had thought he was joking. “But I only saw him this morning,” he’d said, not thinking about the implications of this statement which, anyway, wasn’t true. Bodie had been at his the night before but gone by the time woke up.

“He, ah – handed in his notice a few weeks back,” Cowley had said, apparently very interested in something on the carpet. “He specifically requested – actually, he made it a sort of condition – that you not be told.”

Even then, Doyle hadn’t really believed it. Not til he’d seen Bodie’s flat gutted, cleared out. The aching strangeness of rooms that have been lived in, loved, left in a hurry.

“Who, sir?” Doyle asks across the mountain of files, and Cowley looks up at him with face that says: don’t be so daft. But then it softens.

“Bodie,” he says.

This, perhaps, is the first moment at which Doyle really believes, really understands, that Bodie is not going to come back. That he isn’t about to walk through the door laden with gifts and apologies and a story about an elderly aunt or – some girl – or a case – a kidnap – that Doyle’s phone isn’t going to ring in the middle of night and there’s no card on its way in the post with a forwarding address. There’s nothing. He’s been abandoned.

He nods. “I’ll speak to Betty about it,” he says.

Perhaps the worst thing has been everyone else’s complete lack of surprise: based on everything, on Bodie’s past, his track record, his itinerant 20s and all the other times he’d cut and run, Cowley had apparently been expecting him to do a bunk for years. Almost since he started. “It’s amazing, really,” he’d said slowly, that first morning, “that he stayed as long as this. You might even say unprecedented.”

“No, I’ll deal with it,” Cowley says, now, sitting back in his chair and removing his glasses. For all his steeliness and his formidable reputation, he takes on a maiden aunt quality in moments like these. Doyle’s always found it rather sweet, though increasingly it feels like an unnerving vision of the future.

“I don’t mind, sir.”

“No, Doyle. I’ll do it. I just wanted to make sure you knew.”

“Of course.”

Cowley nods. He opens a folder, thinks, and closes it again. Then he reaches out and grips Doyle hard on the shoulder. It’s an unexpected gesture and it takes him by surprise.

“It can be a lonely life, this one.” Cowley’s voice is surprisingly soft. “I’d understand if you wanted to change your mind. I’d be disappointed, of course, you know that. The division would be all the poorer for it. But I’d understand.”

Doyle shakes his head. Needing something to do with his hands, he drains his cup of cold coffee and replaces it. The chink of the cup hitting the saucer is strangely loud in the quiet.

“No, sir,” he says. “It’s fine. This is what I want.”

**1991**  
Bodie is cooking. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that he’s stirring. There’s a lamb stew on the stovetop and Doyle is sat at the kitchen table, drinking red wine, watching Bodie stir, taste, season. The smell of the food – warm, spicy, vaguely north African – is making his stomach rumble. He hadn’t realised how hungry he was, but suddenly he can’t remember the last time he ate.

“Smells really good, this.”

Bodie turns, still holding the spoon, and his face is glowing. “Yeah?” he says, then shrugs and tries to look casual. “Got into cooking, actually. A bit.”

“I can tell.”

“Yeah. Getting like you.”

“Nothing wrong with cooking.”

“I didn’t say there was.” They smile at each other. Then Bodie turns away, back to the pan, and Doyle can feel it brewing, can feel it in the air before it comes. Bodie’s voice, tentative as he says, “So, what happens after dinner?”

The evening fractures beneath them like ice. Doyle wants to keep it together, wants to live to the end of it without saying anything difficult, without having this argument, and who says it’s going to be an argument? But he knows it will be. He picks up his wine and then puts it down without drinking any. Nervous hands; bad poker face. He’s never had a good one where it matters. 

“Ray?”

“Well, I go home. After dinner, I go back home.”

Bodie turns to look at him. A middle-aged man in a thick woollen jumper. He looks dependable. But then he always did, to Doyle, no matter what. That was part of the problem. “You can’t.”

“I have to. You know that. I’ve got work.”

“Stay here.”

“Bodie.”

Bodie turns off the heat under the pan and comes over. He sits down at the kitchen table. He looks more like himself than he has all day, it’s like time travelling. “I mean it,” he says. “Stay with me. Stay the night. And then we’ll – each day, we’ll see if we – tomorrow you can decide about tomorrow night, okay? And that’ll be another day.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Look, I know I messed everything up--”

Doyle shakes his head. It doesn’t mean no.

“Just – let me make it up to you. Ray.”

Doyle can feel his heart thudding in his chest. How many times in the last five years has he pictured this? The heartbroken apology, recriminations, reconciliation – being right all along to keep the faith – knowing deep down that Bodie would come back. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t come back. Doyle came here, he chased him, he had to do everything. He feels the old anger rising in his chest.

“I just don’t think I could trust you again,” he says, and Bodie looks like he’s been shot. “Every day I’d just be. Waiting for you to do another bunk. Every morning. Wondering.”

“I --”

“Bodie, why did you do it?”

And then Bodie laughs. It’s a strange, bitter little sound, nothing like him at all. It makes Doyle angrier. “No note,” he shouts, and if he’d thought he was done earlier, after the hillside, he knows now that he wasn’t, maybe he never will be. Maybe he’ll never drag all this rage out of his body, out of his bones. “No letter, no call - nothing.”

“Nothing. No.” Bodie’s shouting now too. He’s stood up. “Nothing anyone could use.”

“Bodie.”

“What was the plan, Doyle? Take over Cowley’s job, run CI5 and – what? Live with a man?”

Doyle feels all the air go out of him. The kitchen suddenly seems very quiet and dark and small. Bodie is standing at the other side of the room and he looks like somebody who's killed people, which he is.

“I don’t--” says Doyle slowly, but Bodie interrupts.

“They’d have found out,” he says. His voice is ragged, pained. “Someone would. And they’d have used it against you. Me. They’d have used me."

"How?"

"I don’t mean their people. I mean our people. Cowley pissed everyone off, it’s the only way to do it.”

“You’re wrong.”

Bodie shakes his head. His eyes are bright. “They know everything. They always did.”

Doyle stands too, and finishes his glass of wine. The rage has deserted him, sudden, and he wants it back. He feels tired without it, nothing to lean on. He goes to the kitchen window, fogged with steam from the heat of the cooking, the heat of two bodies, their breath. He opens it. The air outside is cool on his face.

“Fine,” he says quietly. “But if that was it, why not tell me? Why couldn’t you say all of this back then?”

Bodie shrugs with his hands in his pockets. He looks at the floor. “Because if it had been the other way around. If it had been me. I would have picked you.”

“I would,” Doyle spits, almost accusatory, and Bodie nods.

“Exactly,” he says. 

Doyle moves away from the window and goes over to where Bodie is standing. There’s a look on his face that is so open and so frightened. Doyle wonders if he is telling the truth, or all of it, or if he cares. He wonders what the hell they’re going to do next. They’re standing inches apart. Bodie reaches out, slowly, like he’s not sure he’s going to be allowed, and puts a hand on Doyle’s jaw, thumb against his cheekbone, fingertips against his neck. The weight of it there is warm and familiar and it makes Doyle’s breath catch in his throat.

“I think," says Doyle softly. "That's enough. Enough talking now. Let's worry about everything in the morning."

**1977**  
Bodie drives the rest of the way back. He is too cheerful and talks too loud, and Doyle is too quiet, but they balance each other out, so that for all the world they sound just about normal. Doyle watches the side of Bodie’s face for hours, looking for – something. And Bodie keeps his eyes on the road, like he hasn’t noticed. Like he can’t tell.

That’s what’s pissing Doyle off: Bodie doesn’t even seem unnerved, he just seems like nothing, like normal. It’s driving him mad.

Then, just north of Watford, in a traffic jam, after hours of forced cheerfulness, Bodie says, “For God’s sake, will you stop sitting there with that face on?” and that’s what does it.

Doyle says, “Fuck’s sake, Bodie,” and pushes a hand into his lap.

Bodie gasps – actually, literally gasps, like an idiot – and then he starts laughing, and then they are both laughing, but Doyle doesn’t take his hand away. He pushes it higher, higher, and Bodie makes a bitten-off noise, arches up. His eyes flick to the car radio. Like anybody’s listening. Like anybody cares.

“It’s off,” says Doyle.

Bodie shrugs.

They look at each other, breathing hard, daring the other person to back down, but Doyle won’t, not now. Doesn’t want to. Can’t. He palms Bodie’s cock through his jeans and Bodie watches him with blown pupils.

“Stop?” he says.

“Don’t you dare,” says Bodie.

Doyle flicks the button open on Bodie’s jeans with his thumb, triumphant, and as he slips his hand underneath the waistband he thinks: fuck you for thinking you can hide from me, Bodie. From me.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this story, you can also share it [on Tumblr](https://the-omnishambles.tumblr.com/post/187464542583/wishbone-omnishambles-the-professionals-tv).
> 
> I used to write in Pros fandom when I was a tiny baby teenager on LJ and now I'm BACK because [ailcia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ailcia) and I like to periodically ruin our whole lives. Twelve and a half years of this bullshit and counting, mate. When will they let us live?
> 
> Anyway, sorry for this deeply self-indulgent story but what a joy to think about these stupid boys again!
> 
> [This](http://hatstand.slashcity.net/charinfo/background.html) timeline specifically was a helpful guide for piecing things together, but huge thanks and love to all the women who've kept this fandom alive for FORTY YEARS. Where would we be without you?!


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